THE OREGONIAN
SEPTEMBER 19, 2085
Henry Konishi, self-proclaimed “Earth-born Martian,” tree hugger, and pencil evangelist, died Wednesday. He was 108 years old.
He died heroically in a hail of gunfire, leaping through the air with his walker to shield the AI known as Peregrine, according to his wife, Trina Wetzel-Konishi. “That’s how he would have wanted us to describe it, I think,” she said. “He always wanted that kind of death but didn’t think he lived the right life for it.”
Peregrine, thought to have been destroyed in the 2083 fire that killed her maker and “consort,” computer scientist Matthew Fletcher, popped up as a prisoner in the most unlikely of places—Mars. In the bizarre tragedy, Peregrine took Konishi hostage. It was a desperate effort to extort Martian Security Forces for her release from the planet, and a situation which ended in Konishi’s death. No public arrest records exist to explain Peregrine’s imprisonment, and it is unclear why Konishi would have given his life to protect the one who was holding him hostage. MSF claimed Peregrine was armed and dangerous and had invaded the Konishi home, which necessitated their use of deadly force.
“We were aiming for Peregrine, obviously,” said a security officer under the condition of anonymity. “Konishi jumped into the line of fire, and even on Mars we can’t stop bullets once they’re shot.”
Friend and neighbor Shana Payne was the only witness, as Mrs. Wetzel-Konishi was at a medical appointment, but questions have been raised about the witness’s dementia and thus her ability to testify. In the ensuing chaos, Peregrine managed to escape, but certainly she can’t get far.
Henry and his wife were part of the first wave of centenarian settlers to inhabit the red desert planet, part of a controversial program to relieve Earth of overpopulation and prime Mars for mass habitation. “He made Mars bearable, and that’s all I’ll say about that,” said Wetzel-Konishi over an internet connection with a five-minute delay. “I wouldn’t be here without him, and now I’m stuck here without him.”
Henry Konishi was born in Portland, Oregon in 1977, to Kate Sevilla, who worked for the National Forest Service, and Adam Konishi, a dentist. Henry’s brother, Ruben, became a dentist like his father, but Henry was more of a free spirit, preferring to define himself in other ways. “I can’t think of a more tedious identity than one’s job,” he was known to say, irritating friends and family.
Eventually, he would follow in his mother’s footsteps as a steward of the Forest Service trails, tromping all over the Pacific Northwest, clearing out invasive species. “He developed a real chip on his shoulder about the tree of heaven,” said brother Ruben. “Rest of the trail crew would be a mile ahead, and there he was, tromping through the underbrush and chopping down every sapling he could find. He was like a gladiator who only battled trees.” Henry wouldn’t leave the wood in the forest either, not trusting his “enemy” to die. So, as often as he could, Henry would carry piles of tree of heaven wood to his house in North Portland, making spectacular bonfires in the backyard and teaching himself how to whittle.
It was because of these bonfires that he met his wife. “I was worried he would burn down the neighborhood,” said Trina. “I came over to give him a piece of my mind, and he made me marshmallow s’mores. There’s just something so vulnerable about a man with a sweet tooth.”
They married at 41 and 43, respectively, and had no children.
In the course of whittling his trees of heaven, Henry became captivated by pencils. A dying implement in a world of digital communication, America’s proud pencils were once manufactured by Henry David Thoreau himself, a coincidence of naming that Henry took seriously.
He turned the whittling of pencils into a kind of philosophy, insisting they were more than mere writing implement, that they provided a clue to humanity’s missing conscience. “Pencils are designed to disappear when they are used well, and their marks are intended to be smudged and erased.” He thought they might help us remember and find joy in our own temporariness. To drive the point home, he named his pencil company Memento Mori, after the ancient practice of reminding oneself of the inevitability of death.
Pencils were a humble instrument, but, Henry insisted, a potentially liberating one. He began to give pencils as gifts and send letters to friends and coworkers, a real challenge as the days of a national postal service were long gone, but Konishi remained undeterred. He went so far as to deliver them himself or pass them off to traveling friends. In one early love letter to his wife, Konishi wrote: “Capital-L Life goes on, with or without us. ‘Savior’ and ‘martyr’ are synonymous for a reason. We can be stewards of life, never owners of it.”
Despite his hard work in getting letters where they needed to go, Konishi was never happier than when his words were smudged into illegibility.
“Henry thought that should be comforting, being erased, being forgotten. He was looking forward to it, if you can believe that,” Mrs. Wetzel-Konishi said.
Henry was attracted to Red Care for the same reason—drawn to the idea that his physical body would decompose and provide fertile soil for the upkeep of new life. He wasn’t interested in lofty justifications like consciousness transference, which was “just a fancy word for reincarnation.” No, Konishi was interested in trees and the potential for them.
“They don’t have trees on Mars,” he said in a KOPB interview just before launch. “But maybe I can become one, and someone can whittle a pencil out of me. Just as long as they don’t turn me into a tree of heaven. I’ve been very clear about that in my will.” In that same interview, Henry admitted he did have one regret about leaving Earth—“Never seeing that sculpture—Miracolo. That Pompée fellow is a regular Joe just like me, but he gets it. He took a tree of heaven stump and—poof—turned it into a masterpiece. Here I am, whittling pencils like a dope, and Pompée carved Miracolo with a grapefruit spoon, a kitchen sponge, and some videos. I’d give just about anything to see it with my own eyes, just once. This planet is full of so many marvels, I hope those of you who stay here learn to really appreciate it.”
Meanwhile, the search for Peregrine continues. She cannot get far, as the solar radiation on the red planet is too weak to power her neo-skin, and the off-planet network too slow for her to communicate to the nomadic AI for aid.
Henry Konishi is the first human to have died on Mars, but his body will be transported home on a returning ship for an unavoidable criminal investigation and burial, along with the security officer responsible for the friendly fire. Mrs. Trina Wetzel-Konishi begged to return to Earth with him, but this would be a breach of her Red Care contract.